Jonathan Manthorpe: China steers course toward territorial claims

Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun columnist11.08.2012

Chinese President Hu Jintao, centre on the stage, addresses the opening session of the 18th Communist Party Congress held Thursday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. The congress is to usher in a new group of younger leaders faced with the challenging tasks of righting a flagging economy and meeting public calls for better government.Lee Jin-man
/ AP

China’s departing president and Communist party leader, Hu Jintao, gave a clear signal on Thursday that the generational changes among Beijing’s rulers will not soften the country’s increasingly aggressive conduct of its territorial disputes with its neighbours.

His remarks in a speech opening the party’s 18th Congress since it took power in 1949 also raise questions about the future control of foreign policy in China. In recent years, foreign policy often appeared to be out of central control, with individual government departments and other special interests seeming to pursue their own international objectives.

In his speech, Hu stressed the importance of continuing to develop China’s navy to “enhance our capacity for exploiting marine resources, resolutely safeguard China’s maritime rights, and build China into a maritime power.”

Coming after months of increasingly sharp confrontations between Chinese ships and coast guard vessels from Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam in waters around disputed islands, this reaffirmation of China’s ambitions will raise concern in neighbouring capitals.

On Monday, China escalated the dispute with Japan over five Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which are administered by Japan, by sending five ships from the State Oceanic Administration into the 12-nautical mile territorial waters around the islands, which the Chinese call Diaoyutai.

The Chinese ships approached Japanese coast guard vessels and displayed signs saying: “You are in waters administered by the People’s Republic of China. You are already breaching the law. Move away immediately.”

The Japanese ships held position and the Chinese ships eventually left.

But this was the 11th time Chinese ships have entered territorial waters since September, when the Japanese government, in a failed attempt to defuse the dispute, bought three of the islands from their private Japanese owner. Tokyo already owned one of the islands.

China is also trying to demonstrate that it has a presence and some control over disputed islands and waters in the South China Sea.

Beijing recently set up a municipal government that it claims will administer the Spratly and Paracel islands, which are also claimed and in some cases occupied by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia.

China has in the last few weeks built military outposts on islets in the Scarborough Shoals within Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

Beijing has also asked for bids for exploration rights for underwater oil and gas reserves in areas of the South China Sea, clearly within Vietnam’s zone under the Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Concern in neighbouring capitals may even stretch to alarm. Although Hu is about to hand over the party leadership and later the presidency to Xi Jinping, he will retain the ultimate lever of power, the chairmanship of the party’s Central Military Commission, for several years after leaving the public stage.

Hu, like his predecessor Jiang Zemin, is expected to remain chairman of the commission for at least two years.

The idea behind this tradition is to try to ensure a smooth transition to the new generation of leaders by giving the departing elder statesman a firm and experienced grip on the ultimate source of power in China, the military, until the new men find their feet.

But there are reports swirling around the corridors of the Congress being held in Beijing that Hu wants to keep the chairmanship for five years, the whole of Xi’s first term in office.

But Xi is the son of a revolutionary military leader and therefore has royal bloodlines that the military respects. And throughout his own quiet climb to power in the Communist Party, Xi has cultivated relationships with the military, which has produced a strong coterie of supporters in uniform.

So Xi, who is already vice-chairman of the military commission, may be able to ease Hu out of the picture in as brief a period as possible.

But getting a grip on the various Chinese players and institutions pursuing their own foreign policies may not be easy.

China does have a Foreign Ministry, but it is outranked in the government hierarchy by the military, which is under no obligation to coordinate its objectives with lesser departments.

China’s most senior foreign affairs official, Dai Bingguo, is not even a member of the politburo.

For the moment, the Chinese navy has not been directly involved in the maritime disputes, though its vessels are always close by.

There are five other departments involved, all with their own armed ships and axes to grind. They are the China Marine Surveillance force, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, the Maritime Safety Agency, the Coast Guard, and the Bureau of Customs.

If that is not enough, there are business and economic interests that sometimes seem out of Beijing’s control.

Coastal provinces with fishing fleets manoeuvre for access to the rich fishing grounds that surround many of the disputed islands. Indeed, on Thursday three provinces and one autonomous region — Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi and Hainan — announced they will mount joint patrols to defend their interests in the South China Sea.

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